Chapter 23

The guards outside Keir’s cell glanced uneasily at Gael as he emerged. The skinny one moved to secure the door, but halted when Gael touched his elbow.

“Leave it unlocked, please,” Gael requested. He didn’t like the idea of Keir trapped in there. She was a healer, not a mage who could move dead metal.

Skinny’s eyes pinched in worry. “Sir?” he said.

“You will stand guard, as you were ordered, ensuring that the prisoner stays within and that no one save myself, or Opteon Barris, or the Lord Magus, enters. But you will leave the locks disengaged. Is that clear?” Gael pinned both trolls with his gaze.

“Yes, Secretarius,” the pair chorused.

He surveyed them a moment more, remembering how he had identified Keir’s cell at once, merely by their positioning.

“Guard the entrance to the corridor, rather than her door specifically.”

They glanced at one another and then shuffled into the stair hall, one on each corner where the corridor opened into the larger space. Skinny cleared his throat.

“Like this, my lord Secretarius?” he asked.

“Just like that,” answered Gael.

“We’ll fain we don’t know which cell she’s in, sir. If you like,” offered Skinny.

“Yes. I would.” Gael nodded curtly and strode away.

He gave similar instructions to the prison opteon in the front room—allow only Barris or Nathiar to enter Keir’s cell—and then hurried toward the artisans’ yard. The sun had slipped slightly from its zenith, causing the gatehouse shadow to creep outward by a hair, but Gael hadn’t spent as much time in Keir’s cell as he’d feared.

His life now possessed an entirely new direction. Could a life change so extraordinarily so quickly? His had.

As he crossed the grassy lower level, he searched the yard for one of Carbraes’ messengers. That would be the fastest way to locate the regenen. A hum of activity and bustle floated from the windows of the workshops lining the edges of the yard—the artisans laboring busily within—but the only trolls in sight were a cluster of apprentices outside the woodcarvers’ lodge.

Gael took the steps from the lower level to the upper two at a time.

Someone burst from the door of the kitchen annex, racing down its ramp, just as Gael reached the top of the flight of stairs. When the runner veered, leaping the short drop at the middle of the ramp, instead of passing all the way to the bottom, Gael recognized him.

Short brown hair, lean stature, kitchen apron, bright brown eyes. Barris.

The cook nearly bowled Gael over, so rushed was his approach. He gripped Gael’s forearm.

“Sias! I’ve sent nearly every scullion I could spare from the regenen’s kitchen in search of you! Gael, Dreben’s taken Keir! The Mother only knows what’s happened to the boy since, but it can’t be good. Tell me what you need, and I’ll do what I can.” Barris looked thoroughly harried.

“It’s all right. I promise it’s all right.”

“No! It isn’t! It’s the worst!” Barris cast a harassed glance around the yard, as though some recourse lay upon its sunlight grasses, and then returned to Gael’s face. Some of the tension left the cook’s stance. “You’ve seen him,” he said. “You’ve achieved his release.”

“I’ve seen him just now,” agreed Gael. “He’s all right,” he repeated.

Barris exhaled loudly, then shook his head. “I might have known you were ahead of me on this. What did the brigenen accuse the boy of?”

Gael winced. Not only was he ahead of Barris, he was a long way ahead of him. Would it harm the cook to be seen talking with the secretarius, given what Gael intended to do? He thought not. And . . . he liked this vantage point. No one could approach close enough to overhear them without being seen.

Gael pressed his friend’s hand where it lay on Gael’s forearm. “Barris, Lord Dreas is dead, and Dreben is march in his place.”

Barris swallowed, all the animation draining from his eyes.

Gael continued. “Arnoll, too, has passed from this life.”

Barris looked hurriedly at the ground, passing one hand over his brow and eyes. He stood like that a moment.

Gael waited. He had more to say, but he knew Barris would need an interval—even if a short one—in which to assimilate these losses.

When Barris looked up again, Gael spoke, telling him as succinctly as possible about Keir’s attempt to heal the old march, Carbraes’ order for the immediate re-forging of the gong, Dreben’s elevation, Keir’s subsequent arrest, and Arnoll’s death in the smithy.

“Sias, Gael!” Barris muttered, both sounding and looking a little pale. “Between Theron and Dreben I won’t stand a chance. I may as well swallow down a brew of hemlock now.”

“Theron’s schemes lie exposed to the regenen, who will keep him in check. And Nathiar will stand your friend.”

Barris searched Gael’s face. “Nathiar. Not you?”

“I am leaving Belzetarn.”

Barris gulped. “Sias and every last handmaiden of the nine! Why?”

“The gong possesses a lodestone of the ancients within it. Keir believes that if”—Gael decided not to tackle the matter of Keir being a young woman—“he locates that lodestone’s twin, he can heal trolls. I go to help him in that endeavor.”

“Heal trolls?” Barris spluttered.

“As he healed me, before he attempted to treat Dreas.”

“Who he killed!” accused Barris.

“Check the position of my nodes,” said Gael.

Barris’ breath was too fast to permit the inner sight. With an aggravated glance at Gael, the cook brought it under control. The widening of his eyes told Gael when Barris saw the changed pattern of energea within him.

“So. This ballyhoo you’re feeding me is true.” Barris shifted uncomfortably. “And you’re really going. Will Carbraes let you?”

“I believe I have the means with which to persuade the regenen.” Gael could feel the unpleasant expression on his features.

Barris swallowed. “I’m sorry for your loss,” he said. “I’ll miss him, too. I’m already missing him.”

The seeming change of subject might have perplexed Gael on a different day, in a different place, but now . . . it was all on the table, a world of change.

Gael clamped his lips and dropped his chin slightly in acknowledgment of Barris’ sympathy. “Will you come with us, Barris?” he asked.

“No!” The cook rocked back on his heels.

Gael refrained from response.

“You really mean that, don’t you?” said Barris in a wondering tone.

Gael nodded.

“No.” This denial was more considered. “I’m needed here,” Barris added.

Gael could make that argument for himself, of course.

“Not by Carbraes.” Barris gave a slight grin, then sobered. “By the boys. I cannot leave them to Theron’s caprice. And . . . you and Keir will manage fine without me. Better even.”

“You’re sure?” Gael probed.

“I’m sure,” said Barris. “But how can I help you, Gael? I’m not convinced the regenen will bless your venture.”

“Have you any clue where Carbraes may be found? The sooner I talk with him, the sooner I depart, the better. Even does Carbraes bid me farewell, there are others who will do their best to hinder me. And Carbraes can be convinced by cogent argument. Best mine be the first and last word he hears.” Gael’s eyelids dipped.

“He’s on the rampart”—Barris jerked his head—“the one Keir always favored.”

Gael’s brows knit briefly.

“Have you stowed what you need in saddlebags?” asked Barris. “Arranged for horses? You’re not planning on striding out Belzetarn’s gate in”—Barris scanned Gael—“the tunic and trews you stand up in and nothing else, I trust.”

Gael half-voiced a laugh. “I’d thought to send a messenger boy to secure the services of one of the porters. They know packing.”

Barris shook his head. “Then that is what I can do for you,” he said. “Go on, Gael. It’s the stairs between the hospital and the feltmakers. Get!”

Gael nodded. A porter could handle the gathering of gear perfectly well, but Barris—Gael was sure—had better access to the citadel’s supplies and storerooms. And an opteon-cook possessed far more authority.

“Barris—” Gael paused.

Barris flicked his bright gaze to Gael’s face. “Yes?”

“Get Nathiar to tell you how to find a certain glade in the forest. Tie the horses there, and return within the walls. If I am wrong—if Carbraes detains me—get Keir away!”

Barris gripped both Gael’s forearms. Gael gripped his in response.

“This is goodbye, isn’t it?” said the cook.

“One way or another, yes,” replied Gael. “Be well, my friend.”

“I’ll be eating regularly,” quipped Barris, even while his grip tightened. “But you, my friend? Do you even know how to cook?”

Gael laughed. Barris’ hands loosened. Gael let his own hands fall away, turning to stride toward the stair to the old sentry walk.

*     *     *
Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 23 (scene 104)

Previous scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 22 (scene 102)

Need the beginning?
The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

 

His body, which had been feeling so heavy through all this interview, felt suddenly light. To leave Belzetarn and the personal defeat that each day there represented, to embrace a new goal, a worthy one—Tiamar’s throne!—he wanted it, wanted it so much he felt dizzy. And he thought he saw his way to it.

Keir’s forehead wrinkled. “What?” she said, puzzled.

“The lodestone within the gong possessed no special attribute that permitted you to move troll nodes, did it?” he asked in return. “It provided merely a multiplying of your own energetic power?”

“Ye-es,” she answered, her thoughts still lagging his.

“It was your own skill that healed me, was it not?” he probed further.

Abruptly she understood, her torso straightening, her eyes blazing. “Gael! We have to find that second lodestone! It exists. The gong itself proves those panels recounted history, not mere myth.”

“Hold a bit.” He’d predicted this moment—when his answer would coalesce from thin air—but it all seemed to be moving too fast now. “The other lodestones could be anywhere. How in the north could we ever find one?” he objected. “They could be destroyed, and we would never find one.”

Keir’s fingers squeezed his wrist. “I doubt it has been destroyed. You and Arnoll and Nathiar, between you, could discover no way to destroy the iron boss of the gong. And if it has not been destroyed, then this”—she released him to touch his fingers, still curled around the iron teardrop—“will lead us to it.”

“It will lead us to the lodestone contained within the gong. We don’t know that it is also drawn to its twin, the other one affixed to that airship.”

Keir tilted her head to one side. “We don’t, of course,” she conceded. “Not for certain. But I think it likely that it will. And even if it doesn’t, the other lodestone is out there. Lost, perhaps. But what is lost may be found. The gong was found, even though no one was looking. We will be looking!” She grinned.

“Now will you come with me?” she demanded.

Gael started to laugh. He’d already answered that question in the affirmative, but it had seemed impossible even as he’d said ‘yes.’ Now the impossible had become . . . not easy, but . . . inevitable.

“There’s nothing I want more,” he answered.

Could her eyes blaze any brighter? “Then let’s go. Now! Using whichever is best of your three plans!”

He glanced around him at the dark cell in which they stood, with its meager necessities. The cold smell of stone chilled his spirit, while the shadows dimmed it. He’d almost forgotten where he stood in the intensity of the moment.

“I must tell Lord Carbraes that I intend to depart.”

Keir’s shoulders lowered. “Is that necessary? Or wise?”

“I cannot just scunner out in the night”—it was afternoon, but nighttime went with the metaphor—“as though I were a thief or a blackguard. Carbraes has dealt with me in all honor. I will not recompense him with cowardice and deceit.”

Keir sighed. “He may hold you.”

“He will not,” said Gael.

“Then I will come with you,” she said.

“No!” The denial burst from him. He moderated his voice. “No, you must not. Theron may well have convinced Carbraes of your role in the disguised tin. And Theron was correct. You cannot plead innocence. Your presence before the regenen would be fatal to our aims.”

“And yours will not?” she asked, skeptical.

“It will . . . precipitate matters,” he admitted, “but in a different way. And I—” he felt an unpleasant expression settle on his face “—I will hold Carbraes to my will in this.”

Her brows quirked. “So sure?” she said.

“No,” he admitted. “Carbraes has always listened to reason in the past, but . . . this is different. He would be reasonable in condemning you, and me with you for upholding you. This . . . will require that he be merciful . . . and concerned with his legacy. I do not know that Carbraes possesses such concern. Or such mercy.”

Keir’s face tensed with a strange blend of sympathy and irritation.

“Keir, I must speak with him,” Gael said.

She stayed silent a long interval and then nodded. “When?” she asked.

“Now,” he replied. “I will see him now. And then return to you. Or send Barris or—” he hesitated “—even Nathiar to you. Go with them, if I do so. Will you?”

Her eyes darkened. “Will it mean you have failed?”

“No, it will mean that my plans are shifting,” he answered. “I think we need to move quickly. So quickly that I should not stay longer with you, plotting and planning. Will you trust me?”

She stifled a chuckle. “Gael, I do trust you.”

“Well, then—” He smiled in return.

“Go swiftly,” she said.

He held her gaze a moment and then turned toward the door.

*     *     *
Next scene: coming August 25.

Previous scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 22 (scene 101)

Need the beginning?
The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

 

Standing beside Keir, confronting the window bars between her and freedom, he wished he’d managed to preserve—or create—better options. Perhaps better options simply could not exist within a troll stronghold. That was certainly the conclusion he’d drawn, over and over again, during his years in Belzetarn. The tower swallowed down hope like a dragon gulping knights errant.

Keir started to hand the iron droplet back to him, but then brought it closer to her, slowing her breath, and opening her inner vision again.

Gael followed her lead. “That’s strange,” he murmured.

“What’s strange?” she asked.

He took the droplet delicately between his fingers. “Do you see that the scrolling lattice is asymmetric?”

“I’ve not studied broken nodes,”she answered. “Couldn’t the asymmetry be characteristic of them?”

“Perhaps it is,” he said. “But watch while I turn the iron. I think . . .”

He shook his head and began to twirl the droplet slowly, scrutinizing the tiny array as it revolved. The energetic arcs did not maintain a static configuration as they spun. Rather, each curling scroll altered its position in relation to the others, so that the longest protrusion remained on the side of the node pointing to . . . what did it point toward? Gael worked out the orientation in his mind.

It pointed toward Belzetarn’s tower.

“What does it mean?” Keir asked.

Gael’s brows knit, then smoothed. “I have a hunch, but I’ll need to test it,” he said.

Keir gripped her lower lip with her teeth. “What does it involve?” she asked.

“No magery.” Gael smiled a little sadly.

“What then?”

“I must take it outside to different places within the bailey and check its configuration.” He nodded definitively. “And then I’ll come back and tell you what I see.”

Her mouth straightened in exasperation. “Can’t you just tell me?” she demanded.

Gael repressed a smile. “I could, of course. But I’d rather talk of a certainty than a mere possibility, and my test will not take long.”

She glanced at him sidelong, but gestured him toward the door.

Gael went on swift feet.

He got strange looks at every step of his test.

The guards outside Keir’s cell thought it odd that he would leave for only moments and then return. The opteon in the front room clearly thought the same. The sentries on the curtain walls watched and pointed as he walked to random locations in the bailey, stopped at each for apparently no reason, and then walked on to the next. And the messenger boy, who dodged around him at close quarters, saw him staring raptly at the small nugget of metal while turning it slowly in his fingers, and must have wondered if he were a madman.

But he was able to share the certainty he sought with Keir.

“No matter where I stand, it points always at the tower,” he told her.

“But it can’t be the tower that attracts it,” she stated. “That would make no sense.”

“It’s the gong,” said Gael. “The metal from which it came.”

“The lodestone from which it came,” corrected Keir, her expression wondering.

Gael nodded. “Yes. It has to be.”

“But how does that permit us to salvage . . . anything?” Keir asked.

“I’m not sure,” he confessed, “but there’s something—some idea, some possibility nudging at the edge of my thoughts—that promises an answer. This droplet”—he tapped its polished surface with one fingernail—“points the way, if only we can link the right pieces of our situation together.”

Tension tightened Keir’s face. “Gael . . . we don’t have much time to pull these pieces of yours together. I don’t have much time. Carbraes might push my sentencing until after the funerary rites and Dreben’s investment, but he also might not. He could sentence me this very afternoon!”

She was right, of course.

But Gael had the sense that just as the final snowflake falling on a steep snowbound slope might start an avalanche, so an idea inspired by the last two days of events might shift his perspective so radically that his way forward would not merely appear, but seem so obvious that he would wonder that he’d ever missed it.

He closed his fingers around the iron droplet, concealing it, and searched for words with which to reassure Keir.

“When I near the bottom of a tally sheet, with but a sliver of parchment remaining, I don’t require stacks of additional sheets to finish my tally. I need only one, and truly only the top of that one,” he said slowly. “I just need . . . a moment now, not a day, or an afternoon, or even a full turn of the glass. There’s something I know, or that I’ve seen, that I’m forgetting.”

Keir shook her head. “Gael, it’s not something you’re forgetting or that you’re overlooking. It’s something you’ve been resisting all along. You must leave Belzetarn. As must I.”

Gael shifted his stance, leaning one hand on the sill of the barred window. “How will that answer? Wandering the wilds until a band of renegade trolls cut us down? Or Carbraes’ own legions, sent to do just that? And should we escape either of those fates, a winter storm or a pack of wolves straying down from the northern wastes will take us.”

Gael had ruled out solitary roaming as a reasonable choice long ago.

Keir perched herself on the sill, facing Gael.

“But don’t you see?” she said. “The lodestone in the heart of the gong sat at the bottom of that ruined well in Olluvarde, lost and unused for uncounted ages. And yet, all the time, it was there for the finding. If only someone had been looking, we might have had healing for the truldemagar before I was even born. Our ancestors were not stupid! They must have created more than one solution in all the eons that have passed. We should be out there looking!” Her hand closed into a fist. “Finding that solution—or those solutions—is the one truly worthy thing we can do to end this long war between those who bear Gaelan’s mark and those who do not. Even if we seek and never find anything, we’ll have done the right thing, instead of merely tallying which evil is the lesser of the two wrong choices available to us.”

She was right again. His doubts and his caution seemed suddenly petty when viewed against the tapestry she portrayed. Doubt might be accurate, but a man could lose himself in always compounding for what was practical and prudent. He had lost himself. And Keir was offering a way by which he might seek redemption.

Yet he did doubt.

The quest she sketched was a young person’s dream, conjured by inexperience that had not yet seen how luck alone was rarely sufficient to solve even simple problems, let alone complex and longstanding ones such as troll-disease.

Keir’s gaze grew almost tender. “Will you help me? Can you help me? Can you get me out of here? And will you come with me when you do?”

Gael’s lips twitched. That ‘when’ of hers was telling. Even imprisoned, awaiting sentence of death, and surrounded by the whole of a troll citadel, she had confidence that Gael could assure her safety.

“I’ve been considering three different plans to remove you from your cell and from Belzetarn,” he said. “None are ideal. You do realize that it’s not the locks on your cell that pose the real difficulty? Those are trivial. A mere smattering of magery, and they click open. It’s the presence of fifteen-hundred warriors—plus guards—who comprise the real obstacle.”

“But will you come with me?” she persisted.

“Yes,” he said. That was a given, but too much else remained unsettled. Getting Keir free was only the start; he needed the steps that came after.

She leaned forward, resolution firming her expression. “Tell me your three plans. We should—”

He overrode her. “Keir, running away from Belzetarn isn’t a plan. Randomly searching for some unknown artifact of the ancients isn’t a plan. We need, I need, detailed and specific—”

The overlooked, disregarded, missing piece slotted into his awareness so abruptly he swayed, glad of the stone sill beneath his palm.

“The panels at Olluvarde depicted more than one lodestone!” he exclaimed. “Two, I think. Maybe three!”

*     *     *
Next scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 22 (scene 102)

Previous scene:
The Tally Master, Chapter 22 (scene 100)

Need the beginning?
The Tally Master, Chapter 1 (scene 1)

 

Chapter 22

Gael felt hollow inside as he gazed at her, her hands outstretched, eager and urgent, dismay chasing hope across her countenance. If only he had saved the gong for her. But he hadn’t. He’d thought he could save a fragment of the node that powered it—intact—but he’d failed to do even that. Would his failure in this one aspect mean that he’d failed her in every way? He hated that all-too-likely possibility.

Her brows crinkled. “You didn’t save it?”

“No.”

“But I heard it,” she protested.

“Keir—” his mouth felt dry—“I never intended to fully destroy it. I changed it, warped it so that it would no longer weaken trolls. Didn’t you notice the changed effect on you?”

All the taut anticipation ran out of her. Her reaching hands dropped. Her shoulders sagged. “Oh.” The very word was muted. “I had such dreams—” She broke off, turning back to the window.

Gael moved to her side. “I’m sorry,” he said, lowly.

She jerked around to glare at him. “Sorry! What good does that do? How could you? The one resource in all the North that could treat troll-disease, and you wreck it!” Her teeth gritted together. “Surely you don’t have to be a healer to understand its importance!”

He longed to reassure her, to comfort her, but there was no comfort in their situation.

“I tried to preserve a copy of the undamaged node,” he said, “but I did not succeed.”

Censure pulled at the corner of her mouth. “‘Tried and failed’ is no better than ‘sorry’!” she exclaimed. “Oh! What’s the use, when your only ally is so short-sighted!”

He could not blame her for her anger. He’d been just as furious with her, not so many moments ago. With reason. She possessed equal reason for fury. Had he known he would fail to preserve the node intact in a fragment of the lodestone from the gong’s central boss, he would have chosen differently. Events had overtaken him before he could rage at himself for more than Arnoll’s death, and he was long past mere rage now. But his regret intensified under her just criticism. And yet . . . her naming him as her ally heartened him.

She returned her attention back to the view through the barred window, her breath coming hard through her nose.

Gael stood silent beside her. He had more to say—more bad news—but they must settle his betrayal of her, or at least find some measure of truce, before he would add to her burdens.

Her breathing calmed. Still gazing out the barred window, she said flatly, “I don’t know what to do now.”

He didn’t either. It felt like all of their options had run out.

In the bailey, down the slope, the boys building the funeral pyres had stopped piling more wood on them and switched to hanging the banners of all the opteogints from the inner crenellations of the curtain wall.

“There is worse,” said Gael, reversing his decision to wait with his next disclosure. He felt Keir go very still. Strange how the difference between rejoicing and disappointment could be matched, or even exceeded by, the difference between disappointment and strictly-contained fear.

“Arnoll is dead,” he said quietly. “That is who will lie on the second pyre.”

She went even more still, and then turned to him. “Gael, no!” she said, heartbreak again in her tone.

His throat felt too tight to permit words.

Her hand, slender and strong, came to his. “I am so very sorry for your loss,” she said.

“It is your loss, too,” he managed to get out.

“Yes,” she said. “It is. But you and Arnoll . . . were like Carbraes and Dreas.”

“Not quite,” he said. “It is not fair to equate a friendship of five decades with that which merely approached one.”

“You cannot tally love, Gael,” she said. “When it fills the heart, it fills the heart entirely.”

How had she grown so wise?

He swallowed. He could not bear to dwell on Arnoll’s death. It was too raw a loss. Toward what other focus could he direct her attention?

“I did obtain a fragment of the meteoric iron,” he said.

“What?” Her voice reflected confusion.

“From the gong’s central boss,” he said. “And containing its energetic pattern.”

Her gaze shifted sideways, checking his expression. “But not before the change,” she stated.

He sighed. “No.”

“Ah.” She nibbled her lower lip. “Do you have it? May I see it?”

He removed the small pouch he’d secured on the fibula that also held his keys, and extracted the thumbnail-sized droplet of polished iron. “Here,” he said.

She turned it over briefly, studying the fragment with her outer eyes, before her breathing slowed to the rhythm that permitted the inner sight. Gael allowed his own inner vision to open, scrutinizing the energetic structure of the iron with her.

Open scrolls of aching gold energea formed an irregular lattice within a hazy glow. The tracery seemed less distinct than that Gael remembered perceiving in the reforged gong, and the radiance seemed dimmer.

“It is quite changed, indeed,” said Keir.

From the green node with the octahedral lines of force? “Yes,” agreed Gael.

She looked up from the gleaming droplet held in her fingers and exhaled shortly, her breath huffing, apparently coming to some decision. Her gaze on his firmed.

“Gael, I cannot forgive you for your destruction of the node at the gong’s heart that gave me the power to heal trolls,” she said.

He hadn’t really expected that she would.

“But,” she continued, “I doubt you can forgive my betrayal of you either.”

No, he hadn’t. He couldn’t. But he’d set it aside, somehow, for an interval, to be an ignored gnawing on his heart that he would deal with later.

The resolution in Keir’s eyes changed to a shy eagerness, and her face softened. “I wish we could trade: my forgiveness for yours.” Her smile was sad. “But it doesn’t really work that way, does it?”

“No,” he agreed.

“But could you set your just grievance aside?” she asked. “I think I can set mine aside. So we can plan. We have to plan, Gael, to figure out what comes next, or we’ll both be lost.”

He couldn’t help smiling back at her, his smile warm, where hers had been cool. “I already have,” he said.

“Really?” she asked.

He hesitated, then nodded.

“Good!” Her more usual poise seemed to be returning to her. “Because I have an idea. I’m going to test this fragment’s functioning,” she declared. “We might yet salvage something. Perhaps, even changed as it is, even as small as it is, the node in this droplet can yet multiply my energea the way the gong did.”

Surely not. And surely an unnecessary risk.

“On something harmless,” she added, perhaps noticing his frown. “On—” she hunted about her person and lifted a stray hair from her shoulder, holding it up “—on this.”

“What will you attempt?” Gael asked.

“Even a dead strand of hair possesses its own characteristic pattern,” she replied. “I shall attempt to shift that pattern so as to cause the color of this strand to change from blond to brunette.”

That seemed harmless enough. “Very well,” he agreed.

He watched as she settled more deeply into the relaxation necessary to manipulation of energea. Sparks of silver welled from the demi-nodes in her palms, chased one another in an aerial dance, and then coalesced to beam into the golden node within the iron teardrop. Its scrolling arcs flared and emitted a gout of amber. As the amber energea touched the regular silver lattice within the hair, the golden node flared again, and the silver sparks still flowing from Keir started to shift color, gaining a tinge of warmth.

Gael’s jaw clenched. Cool energea was safe; hot energea was not.

Keir closed down the sparking thread of yellow-tinged silver, and shook her head, decision and disappointment mingled.

“Did you see it?” she asked Gael.

“Dangerous,” he answered. “Exactly the prelude to innocent magery that goes astray and creates a troll.”

“Yes,” she agreed. “But not only that. Gael, how similar is the working of magery to the discipline of energetic healing?”

He shrugged. “As I’ve never done any healing . . .”

Her lips twitched impatiently. “No, but does a magus shape the inner structure of his flows of energea?”

His brows rose slightly. “Of course. Were one able to slice the flow across, it would resemble the intricacy of a snowflake.”

A puff of breath escaped her. “Well, the energea translated through this drop of iron was blurry,” she said, “and weak. Not only would it be dangerous to use, but you couldn’t accomplish anything with it. It diminished the force of my energea, rather than increasing it as I’d hoped.”

Her shoulders slumped in the wake of this admission, the vitality provoked by her initial idea—now failed—running out of her. He hated having no solution for her.

“I didn’t make this droplet,” he explained. “It was formed when Arnoll tore the node asunder, spattering the iron that held it. This one fragment was enough larger than the others to retain a copy—a blurred copy—of the torn node.”

“That’s why its focus isn’t sharp then,” she said, lifting her gaze.

“I expect so,” he agreed.

Enterprise was returning to her face. “If the focus had been crisp, I know I could have done something with this.” She tapped the shiny metal. “It still channels energea, even though its configuration is altered. It was the fuzziness that made the energetic flow ineffective, that diminished it. If it had been sharp . . .”

A twinge of alarm stirred in Gael’s belly. He didn’t like where her logic was leading.

“You’re forgetting that it was tainting your energea, twisting it toward troll magery, toward gold,” he said drily. “Too dangerous to use.”

Her gaze grew fierce. “It would be worth it!” she said. “What matter if I succumbed to my troll-disease, if I could remedy that of other’s. I would not be the first wounded healer in the North.”

He really did not like that idea.

“But the focus wasn’t sharp,” he reminded her.

“No,” she said regretfully.

She slumped again.

Gael stayed his reach for her shoulders. He didn’t want her to find any answers down this line of reasoning.

A moment later, her lips firmed, she jerked upright, and her hand shot out to grip his wrist. “Gael. If you were merely subdividing the gong’s node, the process would be less perilous, would it not?” she asked. “If you weren’t trying to alter its configuration,” she added hurriedly.

“Perhaps,” he replied, his tone as discouraging as he could make it.

“Because a controlled subdivision—not an accidental one—would yield a node that generated the precision I require!” Her face was alight again. “If you heated the gong afresh to extract a droplet containing a copy of its node, that copy would be crisp, not blurry!”

He’d thought he’d do almost anything to change her dejection to renewed hope, but not this. Never this. A vision assailed him of her channeling her energea through a fresh fragment obtained by him from the gong, her clear features and straight body sagging into the deformities of the truldemagar, as she poured out her health—her very self—in the healing of others.

Her grasp on his wrist tightened. “Will you do it, Gael? Harvest another piece of the gong’s lodestone? For me? For the afflicted? For the unafflicted?”

This, too, was a new Keir. He’d never seen her plead before.

“The changed node channeled your energea, but you don’t know that even a good copy—an unblurred one—would multiply it. And that is what you require, is it not?” he asked. “Also . . . Carbraes has consigned the gong to the new march,” he told her. “I doubt Dreben will allow me within sight of it.”

“Oh,” she breathed, all the air flowing from her lungs.

He’d only thought he’d seen her discouraged before. This was utter despondency.

*     *     *
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The Tally Master, Chapter 21 (scene 101)

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